Companion was recorded in a special three-night series of shows in July, 1999 at Chicago's famed Green Mill jazz club — an unusually short amount of time to produce a live album. To mine as much material as possible from those nights the performances were run more like recording sessions than live shows, with the crowd reverently hushed. Patricia Barber is in her element and the only thing that seems to have suffered for the recording circumstances is the album's length — at seven songs and 40 minutes, it walks the line between standard EP and full-length size. One surmises that it might have been longer had there been more album-quality material from the performances. Recalling the energy that was present on her critically worshipped Cafe Blue album, there is an ease and creativity on Companion which makes her fans' devotion understandable.

The Maya Embedded Language, or MEL, is the very foundation of the Maya application: it's what makes it so powerful. And, if you know MEL, you can make Maya work more efficiently for your own projects. Whether customizing the workspace, modifying the tools that already exist, or creating new tools, an artist versed in MEL is ready to exploit the true power of Maya. The problem is that MEL can be very intimidating to artists and other non-programmers. To an artist, MEL represents a whole other world filled with words like variable, conditional statements, and vector cross-product. Like any other programming language, MEL has its own vocabulary and rules of grammar. To master it, you simply need to learn the rules: you don't have to become a programmer. The MEL Companion helps artists do this. In the first part of the book, you'll learn about the syntax, vocabulary, and structure of MEL - its grammar.

The first in a series of Companions that offer broad coverage of a range of international courts and tribunals, The Elgar Companion to the International Court of Justice is a one-stop reference for those wishing to understand this highly significant and successful court.